With the rapid development in the performance of computer systems, computer systems are popularly used in many fields. Particularly, so as to improve the performance of a computer system, the computer system must be provided with hardware components and/or software components for performing a variety of functions. Such components are normally interconnected by a system bus, which is provided to transfer some information between the components.
However, in case of a computer system with a variety of functions, if there occurs a system failure, it is difficult to check operating conditions of the computer system in order to recover the computer system.
There are several cases of system failure in the computer system. As one of them, the computer system may be mal-operated or halted because of the incorrect transfer of signals between the hardware/software components. The computer system may also fail because of an incomplete program being performed in the computer system. In case of system failure, an operator cannot easily check the cause of the system failure without the use of a computer monitoring apparatus.
Several U.S. Patents address this issue. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,413 for an Environment Monitoring System For Standard Interface Bus Computer Systems to Lui et al discloses an apparatus and method for monitoring the environment of remote components attached to a host processor via a standard interface bus.
What is needed is a simple design for a bus monitor that uses the bus clock to drive the monitoring equipment. Discrete logic circuits enable the bus clock to drive the clock for the bus monitor.